


Cockroaches

by kangamangus



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Disorder, Gen, Insomnia, Mania, Medication, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, POV Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1051050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangamangus/pseuds/kangamangus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt: Dean takes SSRIs to deal with his depression and/or PTSD. It triggers a manic episode. Eventually, Sam checks him into the hospital, because he's getting pretty scared for Dean and doesn't know what else to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cockroaches

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hospitalized Dean week at hoodie_time on LJ. Please note that that this fic deals with mental illness (bipolar disorder). Warnings for mania, psychiatric drugs, psychiatric hospitalization, impulsive behavior, hallucinations, and some mild violence. 
> 
> Spoilers through 9.05.

The thing about lies is they grow and multiply like cockroaches or something equally annoying, and spread until they're in every corner and yes, this makes a ton of sense, fucking cockroaches. Dean even says it out loud: "Fucking cockroaches."

Sam looks up from across the table, eyebrows moving in on each other. "What?'

"Cockroaches. Don't like 'em." 

"Have you seen any in here?"

"No."

Dean doesn't elaborate, because he does a lot of dodgy, weird shit lately, and Sam has learned to take it or dismiss it or maybe Ezekiel is in there filing things away. He doesn't fucking know.

* * *

In the morning, he takes a single pill and washes it down with coffee, black, just the way he likes it. Days of this shit, now, almost a week, and he doesn't know why he's still trucking along like it's going to fix anything. He knows better. Knows that it's hopeless, that even if he flooded his brain with chemicals, he would still be a mess up there. But Sam had asked, had looked at him as though Dean were the one finally coming to pieces, and maybe he was. There's a lot of Hell and Purgatory and other shit up there, and there are angels and demons everywhere else, and maybe he did need something. 

Maybe all it took was the threat of possession and the realization that Hell was awful, but that Dean could do a lot more damage up here. That he had it in him, and all it would take is a Knight of Hell breaking down barriers and burning off tattoos. That's a kind of wake up call, isn't it? The beginning of an end. How do you keep going when your nightmares change from Hell into real life, and you have to wake up and greet that every morning? 

He takes the damn pills every morning, because even when everything else in his life is going to shit, the routine offers him a sliver of comfort. Not a solution, but something to do every morning. A reason to get out of the bed and face the day.

* * *

When he threw the pills in the toilet, it was because Dean had a revelation. It sounds so stupid when he tries to explain it to Sam, the _I just felt like it would be okay if I chucked them, Sammy. I just felt like I didn't need them anymore._ That somehow, doing this would help him even more than taking the pills that he didn't even want to try to begin with. It made sense, even if he couldn't verbalize it. 

Before Sam came — before that conversation, and before the argument that would come to follow, and before Dean decided to get drunker than he had been in ages and go pick up a chick even though he doesn't do that anymore — before all of that, Dean thought _shit_. 

_Do I fish them out?_

_No I'm better. I'm better._

A few swears later and he's fished them out anyway and put them on a towel, and they're all goopy and sticking to each other and —

_I'm not taking that shit._

Later — after Sam and the fight and the alcohol and the girl and Dean thinking about even getting a second girl because he doesn't feel like going back to the bunker, can't really stomach the thought of Sam and his room and trying to sleep, and making everything smell like cheap perfume and whiskey — Dean comes home and the pill bottle is there, only it's filled with perfectly dry capsules.

* * *

Dean is no stranger to insomnia. He understands how well exhaustion and not-sleep go together, how they join forces to fuck everything up and lead to mornings that even coffee can't recover. He isn't used to feeling _good_ even though his eyes burn and his body wants to sleep, even though he's spent three hours staring up at the ceiling and following everything Sam had told him after the fourth time he found Dean awake at four a.m., rummaging in cabinets. 

No artificial light.  
Cut back on alcohol.  
Don't eat after dinner.  
Exercise. 

(Okay so Dean didn't really follow that last one, because he isn't like Sam, has never been about that whole jogging thing, and maybe he eats after dinner sometimes, and why the hell would he cut back on alcohol, it isn't like he has a problem anymore, but he does stay away from artificial light and that doesn't help at all.)

One night, Dean is cleaning the kitchen and he has a sudden stroke of genius. It's so obvious, he doesn't know why they hadn't considered it before. 

He leaves and he's gone for a couple of days and Sam is scared out of his mind, and Dean doesn't answer his phone, but it's okay because this is really important. When he comes back, he has a cut on his face and a slight limp, but it's worth it, because he has the ingredients that they need, and Dean is going to bind the fuck out of God. 

"You're what?" Sam asks, eyebrows shooting up (Sam's eyebrows get around, Dean thinks, and laughs to himself, but that only makes Sam look even more doubtful. What the hell, Sammy). 

"We bound Death," Dean points out. And God is out there somewhere. He used to not believe, before heaven and the apocalypse and everything, but now he knows that God exists and is just a douchebag, and Dean is going to snag that motherfucker and teach him a thing or two about parental responsibility. 

"Dean, man, sit down for a minute."

Dean's pacing, he realizes, and he makes himself slow down, but doesn't sit. "I got everything we need, you know, for that spell Crowley gave us? I got the fulgurite and everything. It was close, I didn't think I was going to get it, man if you could've seen the way that bitch handled herself — but I got it, so we're gonna do this."

"Dean," Sam tries again, standing up now and reaching out a hand — not touching, but encouraging. "Slow down. What happened when you—"

"Not important," Dean replies impatiently, shaking his head in disappointment because this is the best idea he's ever had, and Sam needs to stop worrying about everything else and focus on the _point_. "Focus, Sammy. We're gonna bind God."

"But the spell —"

Dean doesn't miss a beat. "I fixed it. Fixed the translation, wasn't that hard, just got a couple of books. It'll work. Look."

Dean pulls the paper out of his pocket and hands it out to Sam. Sam glances down at it, then back up at Dean.

Sam looks at him like he's battling with himself — because they've got this new thing where they're trying to trust each other and Dean is pretending there isn't an angel inside Sam, and Sam wants to tell Dean that they need to talk this out, but Dean has good ideas a lot. He's smart, Sam said so, and god damn it, this is a good plan. 

It fails, and Dean beats the shit out of Crowley. 

The string of events that lead to that moment are difficult to piece together, but the fact is: it doesn't work. And since Crowley gave them the spell, Dean takes his rage to Crowley. Sam doesn't intervene at the first couple of punches, because he knows, he's seen Dean do this before, knows that Dean sometimes extracts answers with blows, like with the reaper. Only, back then Dean was level, calm, almost too stoic, and now as he hits again and again, there's emotion, and Dean doesn't stop, doesn't even take a breath. 

Sam pulls him away. 

Crowley spits blood and despite it all, manages a smug glare, and says, "Put a leash on your dog, Moose," and then Sam is pulling him out of the room. 

"Dean, what the hell?" 

"He gave us that ritual!" Dean is pulling back, yanking himself away.

"But you're the one who changed it. If it didn't work —"

And then he hits Sam, too.

* * *

Later Dean walks into the kitchen to holy water and borax and a knife and Sam chanting some words.

Nothing happens, of course, except Dean reinvents Sam's shiner.

* * *

Dean knows he's in deep shit when he brings a girl back to the bunker. He just really, really wanted to fuck her, it was all he could think about, but she said she had roommates, and could she go back to his place? So Dean said yes, and then they are there, and Sam is at the bottom of the stairs glaring up at him, treating him like a child, telling the girl to go home. 

"Aw, Sammy, C'mon, she won't tell."

The girl giggles and makes a joke about Sam pulling out a shotgun on her or something, and when Sam moves to go grab something, maybe even a shotgun, because they do have a couple of those around, the girl finally gets a clue and leaves. 

Sam accuses Dean of being drunk, but he isn't, not _that_ drunk. They fight about it, and then Sam doesn't talk to him for three days straight, so Dean occupies himself with cooking everything in the bunker.

Sam thinks he does it just to fuck with him, but here's the thing: Dean _really_ likes to cook.

* * *

Things get bad when Dean is due for a refill. He feels mentally exhausted, but he still can't sleep, and the thoughts are getting bad again, or maybe even worse than they were before the pills. He can't really remember, was it that bad back then? He thinks of Hell and of hellhounds and remembers the fact that he had a dog in his car not too long ago, and then there's the fact that he almost lost Sam a couple of times since the Trials, and then there is Cas, Cas who still isn't home with them like he should be, and then there's Zeke, who came out and talked to him just a few minutes ago, with _Are you okay, Dean?_ until Dean yelled at him to leave him the fuck alone and quit taking up Sammy, his Sammy, and oh fuck, he can't stop thinking. It won't stop. 

Sam's talking to him again, which is nice, but Dean's attention goes inward and he can't focus, no matter how many times Sam tries to get his attention back, and he's jittery. He moves his leg, and then his fingers, and then he shifts, and Sam gets snippy and asks if he could sit still for just one moment.

So Dean stands, shoving the chair back, and leaves the room. 

When Sam finds him, he's in Sam's room, not his own, and he's unpacking everything, organizing things, and Sam is _pissed_ , because this is his shit, and Dean needs to leave his shit alone, it's like, a unspoken rule from living in small spaces all their lives, but Dean needs something to do, and he wants Sam to move in. He wants Sam to have a home. With him. 

Sam pulls him out of the room and forces him to sit somewhere else, and he's pissed, but he can't even focus on that.

"What's going on?" he asks, and Dean can't tell him about how he's started to hear Alastair, and he can't remember if it was that way, before, and he can't make it stop, either, so he shrugs and tells Sam to stop being so worried, he just wanted to fucking clean something is all.

* * *

"I think it's the Prozac," Sam tells him. He looks guilty, and Dean thinks that he deserves to look guilty, because he's the one who pressed the damn pills in his hand to begin with, who made Dean promise that he'd try. Everything he's been through, and Dean's being unraveled by a fucking pill. Not a demon, not an angel, not even a stupid vengeful spirit. 

"I ran out four days ago," Dean confesses, and he laughs, because it's fucking funny. Because stopping them isn't stopping anything, and he wants to tear into something. Like his face. Or Sam's face. 

"I know." That gets Dean's attention, because he didn't think Sam knew, but Sam knows too much for his own good, has been that way since a kid, when John left Dean to field all his questions. Sam usually knows all there is to know, except for the fact that he's being used as a vessel for a wounded angel — except for the fact that Dean forced him to live at a time when Sam did not want to live anymore. Except for that. 

"I think..." Sam trails off because, Dean knows, he knows Dean won't want to hear the rest. "I think we need to go to the hospital, Dean. It's not enough to just stop taking the pills, if you're...if this is what I think it is."

"No," Dean answers, feeling more calm than he has in hours or days or maybe weeks, he loses track a lot now. "It just needs to get out of my system."

There are protests, but Dean stops listening and instead he goes to work on that binding spell, because he's not giving that up when he knows he can do it. He can bind the fuck out of God, and then maybe kill him, too, for being such an elusive asshole.

* * *

He agrees to go after he thinks he sees Azazel. 

He thinks it's djinn poison, and goes to Sam in a rush and tells him he needs the antidote.

"Djinn can't get in here, Dean." Sam says it slowly, trying to pierce through Dean's rambles, to get him to calm down. "You probably—"

"Either he's here or I'm poisoned, Sammy, and if I'm not poisoned, I'm gonna take him out a second time over." Before he tricks him or hurts him or tries to use Sam again — oh god what if Sam gets visions again or if the apocalypse starts again or —

Sam moves. Dean didn't even realize he was on his way to his room, to his weapons, to kill that stupid yellow-eyed bastard _again_. Sam grabs him and wraps those long arms around him and says, "Dean. Dean. Listen to me please."

Dean stills, because he knows that tone, he knows that Sam is begging and worried and scared, and that everything is about to fall apart.

Everything's already fallen apart. 

"We need to go to the hospital. Please."

"But if Azazel—"

Sam's arms tighten around him. "Trust me, Dean. Can you do that?"

Dean's breathing consists of shallow, short breaths, he hears that and Sam's breath, too, and somewhere beneath it all, he hears Hell and _Hiya, Dean_.

But that's what they're supposed to be doing, now — trusting each other and helping each other, even if Dean fucked that up. So he can give that to Sam, now. He can try and shut out Azazel and _let it go, brother_.

"Yeah, Sammy." 

He lets Sam lead him to the car.

* * *

Sam lets him blast his music after Dean announces that it helps keep his head quiet.

* * *

They want to check him in, and Dean fights, but Sam tells him it's only until they get him on something else. Only until he's better and his mind has slowed again. 

Only until there's no more Azazel. 

And hell if that doesn't make Dean agree.

* * *

The world was in color before. Dean didn't realize it then, but he does now that everything is whitewashed in _hospital_ and his mind is grayed out by a fog that arrests him every time he tries to think. 

It's the new pills. He isn't better, not on the inside, he's still restless and racing internally, only trapped in a body that won't line up with his mind. He lags and nearly falls asleep during breakfast, during art therapy, during group. But even if he dozes a little, it isn't a perfect sleep — tainted as it is by some kind of inner movement that keeps him from really resting. 

Sam comes to visit during the hour that Dean gets for visitors. He asks if Dean is okay, but Dean just sits there are tries to jiggle his leg because he needs to move. It doesn't work right. He answers in monosyllables and Sam looks conflicted, he should look conflicted, Dean thinks, but he doesn't really blame him. 

This is his fucked up head.

* * *

There's a routine, and the hospital sticks to it like it's all that's keeping everyone together and obedient, moving from one room to another. On the second day, Dean already has it down — and he has memorized all possible exits, too, has decided which nurses will prove the biggest threat, has already determined that Sam has _one more day_ to get him the hell out of here before he takes this shit into his own hands. 

After breakfast and meds, he goes to group and refuses to participate. The doctor is gentle, urging, but Dean is a smartass and always will be a smartass, even when he's pumped full of something that makes him a little less creative with his backtalk. The doctor scribbles stuff into her notepad, but Dean isn't using his real name, so she can label him however she wants. 

Art therapy, where they make crafts, and Dean paints warding symbols on his paper, asks to hang them up in his room like they give him some sort of measure of pride, and they give in. They think pride in his work is a good sign, a positive indicator that he might not be the asshole they took him for in group, so go ahead, hang them up on your wall. 

Lunch, and then Dean meets one-on-one with his psychiatrist, and she asks him how he's feeling, and Dean thinks that he's feeling pretty damn awful, but years of saying, _I'm fine_ make it an automatic response, a reassurance he gives everyone, even strangers, even when he needs off of this new med they've been giving him, even if he feels like he wants to tear out his hair and maybe scream, if only he had the energy. 

They go outside, they come inside, eventually they eat again. Dean doesn't pay much attention to anything but trying to keep track of ways to escape, of whispering _Christo_ in hallways as he shuffles along with other patients. Of missing what it feels like to have a gun and a knife and five other weapons on his person at all times. Of thinking about using that angel banishing spell _just in case_.

Azazel never shows up, but Dean looks for him anyway. At night, they knock him out with something heavy, and Dean sleeps until the next day starts. Then it's the same crap all over again, and he's going to scream.

* * *

"Get me outta here or I'm gonna break out myself," Dean tells Sam. They changed his meds today — the psychiatrist having seen something in Dean despite his self-assured half-smile, despite the way he tried to blow her off. 

Maybe because he tried to blow her off. 

"Dean, you need to get better." Sam's all crinkly around the eyes with worry and lack of confidence, because he doesn't know if this is right, because Winchesters don't stay in hospitals unless it's for a job. Because Dean doesn't belong here. Not really.

Dean rubs his face, then uses all the energy he doesn't have to glare at Sam. "I mean it, Sammy."

"Give it a couple more days, Dean. Please."

A couple more days, and Dean is going to leave this place crazier than he started.

* * *

He doesn't talk to the other patients if he can help it, but sometimes they talk to him, and Dean learns a lot about mental health. He learns that crazy people aren't really all that crazy. That he can relate to people in a way he hasn't been able to do in years. Maybe ever.

He hates it.

* * *

Sam gets him out on night number five. When Dean gets in the Impala, he doesn't relish it like he thought he would. He curls into himself, leaning his head against the window, so once Sam starts driving, it bumps uncomfortably. 

"I'm tired," he tells Sam. He wants to go home. 

"That's good, right?" Sam asks, still all hope, after everything Dean has done to him. Maybe because of what Dean has done to him. "I mean, that's better. Than it was."

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean answers.

It's a lie, though. 

Dean does that — lies. 

He does it a lot.


End file.
